Prunus across the House Lake

THE OTTERHEAD ESTATE TRUST

The Estate Trust is a not-for-profit limited company set up to lease, conserve and part restore the built heritage and designed landscape that formed the heart of the Victorian Otterhead Estate, owned by Wessex Water.

The Somerset Wildlife Trust (formerly the Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation) managed the site until 2004 and that work, after a gap in management, is being continued at this Local Nature Reserve (designated in 2008) by the Estate Trust, a community group seeking to involve local residents and organisations as well as others within the Estate's much wider catchment area. The aims of the Estate Trust are supported by the Blackdown Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Partnership; Somerset County Council; Taunton Deane Borough Council; Somerset Wildlife Trust and Somerset Gardens Trust.

The Estate provides opportunities for quiet leisure pursuits such as walking. It is also considered to be a potential education resource for studying aspects of the social, economic, horticultural and natural history of the Blackdown Hills, as much of the Estate's infrastructure still survives, though often hidden or unrecognised.

Community involvement includes development of this website, provided free of charge by The Local Channel due to the not-for-profit status of the trust; formation of a Friends Group (see page on this website); registration as a BBC Breathing Place, together with development of a Breathing Place website and providing, with Taunton Deane Borough Council, two information sheets (see News on this website). 

Updates from the Otterhead Estate Trust are published in CBO News the parishes magazine for Churchstanton, Buckland St. Mary and Otterford. Subsequently the updates are added to this website (please see Otterhead Estate Trust Updates 2008 and 2009).

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